Wild Bribery Allegations Are Tearing The Arizona GOP Apart

[Nevilledog]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/arizona-republicans-bribery-conspiracy-theories_n_64023318e4b08223f12e6a3d


Since the 2020 elections, Arizona has been ground zero for wild conspiracy theories about supposed voter fraud leading to Joe Biden’s victory. The claims gripped state Republicans to the point that nearly the entire slate of GOP midterm candidates for statewide office last year consisted of election deniers. To this day, Kari Lake, who lost the governor’s race, maintains that she is actually Arizona’s governor now.

Even after getting washed out in the midterms, state Republicans can’t quit these outlandish theories — and now, it has thrown the party into chaos. For the past two weeks, Republicans have faced wild accusations of bribery, money laundering and election fixing — from their own supporters. Their conspiracy theories involve a cast of bad guys ranging from a Mexican drug cartel to the “Mormon mafia.”

The allegations are all thanks to John Thaler and Jacqueline Breger. He is a lawyer with a suspended license; she is a Farmers Insurance agency owner and Thaler’s girlfriend and investigative partner. State Rep. Liz Harris invited the largely unknown couple to give a half-hour of unsworn testimony before a joint hearing of the state House and Senate’s election committees on Feb. 23, which, as Harris said during the hearing, was meant to “figure out what it is we need to do to ensure that the voters of Arizona are confident for all future elections.”

Instead, during her testimony, Breger accused everyone from state officeholders to judges, prosecutors and court-appointed medical health care advisers of accepting bribes from a criminal enterprise.

“Given that Arizona is a border state and that drug smuggling and human trafficking is a billion-dollar business, it would appear that having our elected and appointed officials ensure that the cartel enterprise remains open for business would be paramount,” she said, setting off a firestorm that is still burning weeks later. “The cartel will invest substantially to ensure that the ‘right’ people are in key positions so as to further their objectives.”

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